Add Color to Your Decor on a Budget (she: Carmella)

I don’t know about you, but I am officially over winter! Spring fever is hard to catch with all this cold and snowy weather we’ve had (and I live in the south!) but I’ve started to dream of green grass, flowers,  and bright and sunny days anyway.

I love adding a little extra color to our home this time of year, it gives me hope that color is soon to be on they way 🙂 Today, I wanted to share some quick ways to add color to your decor on a budget.

To start, head to your favorite fabric store and start looking for colors and patterns that make you happy. You can go bold because it will be used only as an accent; this is  great time to try something new! You’ll need about a yard of fabric. To save money, I browse the remnant section first. The fabric in these bins are usually marked 50% off or more!

After you have your fabric, move on to paints. You can sort through the 1,000 bottles of craft paint you have at home {oh, is that only me??} or you can take a small swatch of fabric with you to the craft store. Pull at least three colors that work well with fabric. I went with acrylic craft paint along with some new “chalk” paint I wanted to try too.

The first thing I do with the fabric is make some super easy new-sew pillows to add to the couch. You can find a tutorial that I shared last year HERE.  I promise these will be the easiest pillows you’ll ever whip up,  just don’t tell your sewing machine or it’ll get jealous 😉

I also used the fabric to dress up this little jute tote I got for $3 at Target! Score! All I did was cut a strip of fabric about 4 inches wide and secured it with hot glue. It is the perfect size to hold magazines.

Now it’s time to paint. I love, love using books to decorate with. They are so inexpensive when you buy them from thrift stores  and can be transformed to match any décor with a little paint…

Just a couple of coats of acrylic craft paint on these and they add just enough color to this side of my mantle.

For the “chalk” paint, I wanted to try painting a jar for a little pop of color too. I have SO. MANY. JARS.  it was nice to find another project for them.

This little jam jar has a whole new life now 🙂 PS: I almost always buy my grocery store flowers on clearance too. These flowers still had a week left of life in them for only 99 cents!

Here’s a look at everything in our living room now… can you spot the new colorful additions??

Thanks so much for reading! Come on over to Instagram for more pictures of our home and creative adventures! And I’ll see you here again next month!